Take a minute to learn about Nonverbal Learning Disorder (NLD) with me.
Transcription:
Hey so, have you been hearing more about NLD, in the neurodiverse community, and that is Nonverbal Learning Disorder. It has come into the conversation because the person running on the democratic ticket in the vice presidency, Tim Walz, his son actually is a cool member of the neurodiverse community and he is now out there, representing us in a variety of ways, and in particular one of his special neurodiversities is Nonverbal Learning Disorder and he has great support from his family, which is part of the reason I wrote this article because it is a really good example for most families looking to know, ‘How exactly do I handle this?’ Gwen and Tim Walz did a fabulous job in supporting their son to work and lean into his strengths, so that is what happens when you have two incredible teachers that have seen learning differences before and know how to work with that.
Some of the key things that stand out if you’re like, “Might I have NLD?” Yeah, you might. Key things- visual and spatial awareness, big weakness, high order comprehension might also be a big weakness, social communication could also be a pretty big weakness, math concepts and, well our favorite, executive function, that always falls under that neurodiverse difference item. I’m not going to go into stuff about students, you can read that in my article if you want to. I will talk a little bit about adults, struggles that you might see at home, maps and charts might be a challenge, tendency to overshare some private information with a variety of people. Doing two things at once is a challenge. We’re not doing two things at once. We’re doing one thing. That’s all we’re doing, we’re doing the one thing. Definitely. At work it might be asking too many questions or disrupting the flow of a meeting and so forth for clarification and not noticing that like just missing a lot of the social cues, missing some deadlines potentially, planning tasks is a bit of a major challenge, so there is a great quiz that is also in that article if you want to hop over to that.
Top tools to help out with that, because I’m not just here to talk about with the one thing, like top tools to help out with that; task lists with check boxes- huge win, calendars- digital if it can be whatever works, and having a mentor- having somebody that understands, that is what was really successful I believe and has been so far for Gus Walz, is the fact that he has parents that are mentors and they put other people with him and around him to be mentors to help guide him into his strengths and to not over focus on those weaknesses.
So, thank you for tuning in, I hope you’ve learned a little bit more about NLD and maybe a little about yourself or somebody you love. I’m JoyGenea, international neurodiversity coach changing the world one person at a time. Bye now.